The previews made kind of a big deal of the fact that this was M. Night Shyamalan’s first R-rated film. That was actually a surprise, but it seems it’s true. And you can tell that you’re watching an R-rated movie within the first five minutes, I think — I’m not positive of the exact criteria, but I’m pretty sure the way that girl in the park dies is no longer PG-13.
But this is a hard film to review. Not because I can’t make up my mind about it or don’t know what to say, but because I’m trying so hard not to give anything away. The twist isn’t much of a twist, but still. And I’m still mad at that movie rental chain that gave away the ending for The Sixth Sense, and I don’t need to attract that kind of bad karma. So I have a fine line to walk here, but I’ll do my best.
Mark Wahlberg plays science teacher Elliot Moore, who of course teaches in Philadelphia, because M. Night sets all his movies there. His wife, Alma (Zooey Deschanel, who I really only know as Emily’s sister) is just… weird. She walks around with those huge blue eyes and pale face and absolutely no expression beyond vague concern for a good part of the film, and though she keeps insisting that she just doesn’t like to share her feelings, I think that’s just to cover up the fact that she has no sense of humor whatsoever. Absolutely zero. Elliot’s best friend Julian (John Leguizamo) doesn’t like her, and I don’t think I blame him. But she’s kind of a nonentity anyway, so you don’t really need to worry about her.
The happening of the title is the fact that people are, out of the blue, committing suicide in various gruesome ways, starting in New York’s Central Park and radiating out. (See, I told you that Central Park is still dangerous!) And this is seriously gruesome. They may even have topped the whole helicopter blade trend that’s been bothering me, but I’m not sure. When I saw that particular gruesome death coming, I covered my eyes.
The twist, such as it is, comes from what’s causing this. Apparently something is making the brain’s safeguards against self-harm break down, but theories about that something range from divine intervention to some weird nuclear leak. The part I can’t figure out is why that makes people so actively kill themselves. It seems to me that shutting down those neurochemicals or whatever would just make you take foolish chances, like crossing the highway without looking. Here, they apparently can’t even bear to wait to find less hideously painful ways to die.

The brooding scientist, the traumatized little girl, and the scarily disconnected wife wait for the plot twist.

Anyway, best friend Julian has a little girl, Jess, and since Julian isn’t the main character, the main character soon ends up taking care of said little girl. Fleeing the cities, even the smaller towns soon become unsafe, and with a rapidly-dwindling group, Elliot, Alma, and Jess head out into the wilds of Pennsylvania. They meet maniacs who barricade their houses against nerve toxins (I always wonder if that would really work); a private separated from all his superiors and wandering around trying to act like he knows what to do; and even a little old crazy lady (Betty Buckley) who has no electricity and doesn’t even know what’s been going on. She’s also completely forgotten how to interact with other humans.
And… overall, it really wasn’t very good. I love M. Night, really, but he just can’t seem to hit the high notes of Unbreakable or The Village anymore. I’m not sure what’s wrong, but I went to this film with high hopes, and it just didn’t work out. People have blamed bad casting, which could be part of the problem, but I know it isn’t just that. Something’s not clicking anymore, and it’s really a shame.
So two and three-quarter idols — one for the whole atmosphere of the film, which is very much up to his usual standards; one just because M. Night is M. Night, and three quarters because they actually leave the Philadelphia city limits for most of the movie. Otherwise, the only good thing I really got from this movie was another reason for me to dislike crowds.

But yeah… a lot of horror. It was what I was working on this week.
Also made a fanfare for brass, though! That’s not horror!
The Rule
And here’s a simple request for the now classic style of piano music for horror films…
Classic Horror 1, 2, and 3
Finally, I did… quite a bit for “The Weakness: Episode 4”
Long Note 4, Ritual, Dark Walk, Unnatural Situation all come from that.
Ritual is a particularly nice piece. Super moody.

Finally, a movie has beaten Sunshine for the shortest cast list, with a mere eight people. You don’t even need to bother with three of the names. You never see what they look like, they don’t really act, and they might as well have been played by three random body doubles. I mean, they cast a supermodel, and never even show her face! But they’re the title characters, just the same, and they’re darned annoying.
When I was little, watching Looney Tunes cartoons, I never liked to watch the Roadrunner cartoons because I always wanted the Coyote to win, and of course he never could. It was just that everything always went the Roadrunner’s way, and poor Wile E. could never catch a break. After a while, I got so frustrated on his behalf that I couldn’t bear to watch anymore. This is kind of like a 90-minute version of one of those cartoons, only here there are two coyotes: Liv Tyler as Kristen McKay, and Scott Speedman as James Hoyt. And there are three roadrunners: The Man in the Mask, Dollface, and Pin-Up Girl. The two girls get real masks; but the Man in the Mask is actually wearing a bag over his head, with eyeholes and a mouth painted on. I think it’s burlap. Anyway, it must make it hard to breathe, because he spends most of the movie wheezing like an asthmatic. But even if he is asthmatic, it doesn’t matter, because he’s a roadrunner, so everything goes just the way he wants it to.

Liv Tyler competes in the 100-yard crawl under the watchful eye of a supermodel.

I’m not exaggerating. It’s like covering their faces gives them the power to read minds. Their victims make a break for the car; they’re waiting to stop them. Their victims set up a trap; they neatly turn it against them. About halfway through, I was absolutely desperate for those two to find some good luck. I wanted to help them, and just kept fidgeting in my chair.
I think part of the problem was that the victims weren’t being quite as stupid as one might expect. They have their moments, of course — for instance, when things start to turn weird, Liv very sensibly exchanges the frilly dress she was wearing (they’ve been at a wedding reception) for jeans and a flannel shirt. Except she never actually puts shoes on, or even socks, and runs around barefoot the rest of the film, which is the opposite of sensible when avoiding homicidal maniacs. But for the most part, they don’t make a whole lot of moves that make you want to scream, “What were you people thinking of??” So I kept thinking that things would simply have to get better for them somehow, but they never did, and it was frustrating. And you know how people say that having a cell phone is safe, because then you’re never without a phone to call for help? It doesn’t help these two any, because you still end up without a phone. The batteries die, you can’t get a signal, or you leave it out in the car and the serial killers steal it; and you’re so dependent on the thing you don’t know what to do when hitting ‘Send’ doesn’t get you anywhere.
*ahem* Anyway. Two and three-quarter idols — one for Liv, one for Scott, and the three-quarters because the filmmakers took a bit of a risk, and it did work to an extent. The acting was solid, but it did suffer from something of the same problem The Hitcher did, and I can’t believe I’m saying that, because this was way better than The Hitcher. But though it is cool and trendy to hide the villains’ motives, too much of that just gets really aggravating. Basically, ninety minutes was a little too long. It needed to be more the length of a Loony Tunes cartoon.

New musics.
Achilles – Written as theme music for an epic drama. This starts broad and kicks into awesome at 0:27.
Bass Vibes – This piece gets a little atonal in parts.
Takeover of the 8-bit Synths – This… uhh… hmm… let’s call it ‘experimental’ piece starts out with vanilla guitar and rock drums, and gets progressively crazier as the 8-bit synths take over the piece. Maximum anarchy starts around the 3-minute point.
Trio for Piano Violin and Viola – An unfinished trio in 2 main parts.

That’s the longest title I’ve had to type out yet, I think. But admit it; you’re humming the theme right now. You can’t help it. There are people in Outer Mongolia who know that tune. And it’s all back — the hat, the whip, the wild stunts, and the uniformed bad guys. Okay, this time they’re Soviet soldiers instead of Nazis, but close enough.
It’s 1957, the Cold War is in full swing, and Indy is — well, doing pretty much what he was doing when we last saw him. He’s been nabbed by the bad guys and hauled off to a huge government storage facility filled with poorly labelled crates, because there’s something in that mess that the Soviets (led by Cate Blanchett in a black wig and funky jumpsuit) want. No, it isn’t the crate you’re thinking of. It’s a crate full of something magnetic, only it isn’t, because it attracts gold, which isn’t magnetic, and occasionally repels entirely non-metallic things instead, like giant insects and angry natives.
The crystal skull of the title is basically like these skulls that the new-age types like to use for meditation and psychic energy and stuff. They name them and everything. This one remains nameless, though, and looks like it belongs to a Grey or a Bug-Eyed Monster alien, or whatever they’re called these days. Legend has it that whoever returns the skull to the place it was stolen from, back when the Conquistadors were ransacking everything, will gain control of its power. Where was it stolen from, you ask? Why, the ancient lost city of Acator, of course, better known as El Dorado, the City of Gold. It isn’t really quite a city of gold, sadly, but it is nifty-looking.
The fact that people (including himself) have been searching fruitlessly for this city for centuries doesn’t faze our hero, though, and the intrepid Dr. Jones is soon on his way there, with the nice little journey-marked-on-map sequence that you’re picturing right now. As in Live Free or Die Hard, he now has a younger assistant in tow to help with some of the rough stuff, one Mutt Williams. No, that’s not a typo — he calls himself Mutt. It’s written on his jacket. He’s a 1950’s greaser obsessed with combing his hair, which is amusing, and rides around on a vintage Harley-Davidson, which I’m sure will make some people in the audience drool. Indy seems to think he’s too old for this (though he also wants to prove himself in the face of Mutt’s conviction that an old teacher isn’t going to be any help), but old friends are in danger, and he dives in to the breach.

Just because he always works at night does not make him a grave robber. Honestly.

And in a way, it’s sort of like watching any of the first three movies again (well, maybe not Temple of Doom — that singer drove me crazy, and the new characters here aren’t like that). It sticks to the formula, but isn’t too terribly repetitive. It’s moved with the times, which helps — the gap between the movie and Last Crusade is roughly the same in real life as in the fictional timeline, and Harrison Ford does a good job making Indy a little more world-weary. And he’s still in quite good shape, which impressed me. There are plenty of references to past characters and situations, so watch for those, fun guest-stars, and surprises that aren’t really surprises, but are enjoyable just the same.
The stunts have of course gotten wilder, because they always seem to do that for sequels. Indy takes a ride on a rocket-propelled car, falls down not one but three waterfalls in a little vehicle that looks rather like a Duck from Wisconsin Dells, snags guns with his whip, retrieves his hat from the weirdest places, and even stumbles into a nuclear testing site. (Kids, don’t try this at home!) The violence is still almost cartoonish and not at all bloody, so it’s fairy safe for the younger set, though the huge ants might freak them out. They freaked me out a little — think the scarabs from The Mummy and you’ve got them pretty well pictured. (Technically, they’re African ants and our adventurers were supposed to be in Peru, but since they were actually in Hawaii anyway, it doesn’t really matter.)
So all in all, it was a ‘safe’ movie. The script was solid but predictable, the acting good, the casting excellent, but no one went out on any kind of creative limb. The formula was there and proven, and they stuck with it. But on the other hand, there weren’t any painful moments, either, where they try too hard to recapture old magic and you just end up wincing. Maybe the long gap helped with that, but in any case, it worked pretty well. So a good, solid four idols. It will fit nicely in your collection next to your other Indy DVDs (they even produced it with a sort of eighties look to the film quality, which was cool), and will be nice to haul out to watch again on rainy Saturday afternoons. And really, innovation all the time would just be exhausting.